Guest post by Ken Burnett, VP/ Director of Training and Business Development, Bank of American Fork

This series is written from experience and is part of Bank of American Fork’s training program. The program embraces the philosophy that training is a skill-based job, and managers need to learn specific skills to be successful.

Training professionals have limitations in the types of training they are able to single-handedly provide.Content may be very complex or specific or there may be too many training sessions to handle on your own. It may be helpful to have others in your organization assist in the process, but be sure you’re still involved in consulting with and helping your associate.

Often, a subject matter expert training without assistance will skip to the parts of the topic that are cool or difficult. They may be so comfortable with tasks that they don’t remember to include context or the basic sequence of a task. Just like you, a training professional, wouldn’t be in charge of the accounting or auditing process without guidance, your associates should be in charging of training without some guidance.

However, it is critical that you maintain good relationships with your business partners.Meet with them on a regular basis to understand their pain points and how you can help. Be prepared to add value to what they are trying to accomplish.A job aid, job analysis or performance analysis can provide stand-alone value for any department. Most importantly, let them be involved in the training process.

For developing and delivering training, there is a scale of involvement from other groups within your organization. First we will look at partial involvement and second, training that requires another department in your organization to take the lead. For training to be successful, many different departments need to contribute. The following table will help guide you in determining what role the training department and other departments will play.

Type of training

Training Department

Other Department(s)

Cross-department request for technical skills or knowledge training

Use organizational resources as subject matter experts from many areas and develop the content. Train each area to perform its part, and then make each area aware of the entire process.

Provide specific content information and needs that should be addressed for your area.Review the final product/approach so your department’s needs are met.

Core skill (everyone in the organization needs the skill or knowledge at some level)

Make sure you provide the same message to all parts of the organization.

Provide department specific examples and context to make the training more effective.

Interaction-based training

Use scenarios provided by other parts of the organization and fit them into the job aid.

Provide scenarios and situations that apply to the interaction skill.

Highly-technical function or specific skill training

Organize content into job aids and facilitate classroom training as needed with a subject matter expert from other department.

Teach the technical part of the class with the training department providing the facilitation.

Management or leadership training

Understand the outcome of the skills needed and use a facilitation discovery-learning technique

Provide the situations that apply to the leadership skill that people in the organization are struggling with and make sure the conversation is getting at the real issues.

Communication of information that doesn’t require a change of skill, but is new information or knowledge.

Get content or technical detail from other department, and use the information to assist with constructing a communication piece or a job aid.

Provide the technical detail.

Sometimes the training department will be unable to assist in developing training. Make sure you have templates available for job aids, communication and facilitator guides ready for others to use. You should also set aside time to work together to

oDescribe the objective of the training,

oUnderstand why employees are not able to perform the task as assigned and

oDiscuss the basic structure of training.

While involvement by other departments is important, be sure to have a facilitator who is not the subject-matter expert. Consider a time when you’ve met someone who is an expert on something—nuclear fission, baseball cards, fishing—and how the conversation likely went beyond territory you understood. Well-meaning, marginally-crazy subject-matter experts skip context and the basics in favor of the interesting, cool or difficult parts of their subject.

Allow the expert to develop the training, but facilitate the session. Lead the witness, so to speak. Be sure you’re helping to:

oProvide context for the task (why is the organization doing this and what is my part in it?),

Ken Burnett is vice president/director of training and business development for Bank of American Fork. He is responsible for training more than 300 employees on a variety of topics, including coaching and feedback for dozens of senior managers within the organization.

While some of these will be unique to each business, there are a handful of KPIs that should be employed in every for-profit enterprise. Among those are a few critical metrics from the income statement. They include:

• Revenue (sales)

• Cost of goods sold (COGS or cost of sales)

• Gross profit

• Operating expenses (general and administrative expenses)

• Net profit (earnings before interest and taxes/EBIT or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization/EBITDA)

Each of these income-statement metrics focus on aspects of running a business profitably. Notice that I have not included any measure of earnings after interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Why? Because these items have nothing to do with the operations of the business. Interest expense is a function of how the business is financed, taxes don’t have anything to do with how well the company is run, and depreciation and amortization are accounting conventions that have nothing to do with operations.

Also notice that each of the KPIs mentioned is a lagging indicator; that is, it is the result of other factors that create that outcome. These other factors are also often measureable, and are known as leading indicators. With lagging indicators, open-book management raises several essential questions:

• How can we increase revenue?

• How can we reduce COGS?

• How can we increase gross profit? (An answer to the revenue and COGS questions will provide the answer.)

• How can we reduce operating expenses?

• How can we increase net profit? (As the ultimate lagging indicator on the income statement, answers to the preceding questions will create a favorable answer here.)

As management and frontline employees discuss these questions, they should recognize that not all income-statement dollars are created equal. An additional sales dollar ($1) is decreased by the COGS associated with it (let’s say $0.50) and by the operating expenses that might correspondingly be costed against it (let’s say $0.40). In this example, an additional sales dollar contributes only 10 cents to the bottom line ($1-($0.50 + $0.40)).

If, however, you discover cost reductions of $1 (in either COGS or operating expenses), the entire dollar goes to the bottom line. In other words, to get the same impact of a dollar of cost savings, you would have to sell $10. The investment in cost savings literally increases profitability faster than does increasing sales!

That said, revenue should not be ignored. It’s often a first instinct to reduce price to increase sales. While this might bring in new sales, it must be recognized that reducing price without an equivalent reduction in COGS hurts gross profit unless the volume of sales increases significantly.

Price reduction is an easy answer, but the better solution to revenue enhancement is generally to improve product or service quality (hopefully without an increase in COGS), thereby enhancing the ability to sell the value proposition inherent in the product offering.

The answers are not always clear cut, but one thing is clear: before any of these KPIs can be optimized, employees need to better understand the existing metrics. This can be done through the use of dashboards that measure and display leading indicators that drive financial outcomes. Some executives will choose to share metrics expressed in dollars, while others will opt for ratios, percentages, ratings or scales. Whatever the measure used, executives need to start engaging their team in the process of improving financial outcomes. Newcomers to open-book management often find that their income statement is a very good place to start.

Richard Tyson is the founder, principal owner and president of CEObuilder, which provides forums for consulting and coaching to executives in small businesses. For 22 years, CEObuilder has successfully brought about an outstanding financial return for CEO and executive clients through providing leading-edge content in the areas of strategizing, team-building, problem-solving and managing for results, as well as the use of proprietary learning and coaching models.

Today, on Veteran’s Day, we’re thinking of the many Utah seniors who are also veterans. Up to $1 million a day is stolen from Utah seniors (see here). Recently Bank of American Fork received the 2014 American Bankers Association Community Commitment Award for Protecting Older Americans, a national award with only one recipient. Bank of American Fork has a unique passion and five-part initiative designed to help support caregivers and protect seniors from fraud. Behind the initiative are employees that are passionate about helping the seniors and caregivers in the communities where they live and work.

Tracey Larson is one of those employees. Larson, a special projects manager at Bank of American Fork, is the head of the bank’s age-friendly initiative. Her passion stems from being a daughter of senior parents.

“There was a shift for me that caused me to become really passionate about supporting age-friendly banking,” said Larson. “It was when I started to hear the stories. I remember my first meeting on a committee that included hearing first-hand stories of elder and vulnerable adult abuse. I cried.”

Besides her passion for making banking and finance safe for seniors and their caregivers, Larson has the know-how and detailed eye that make it natural for her to move the initiative from words on paper to action in the community.

For example, Bank of American Fork has an age-friendly champion at each branch who receives extra training on how to spot fraud or a stressed caregiver. Although all Bank of American Fork employees are trained to look for and report suspected fraud, the training for age-friendly champions is more comprehensive and goes far beyond what regulators require.

Because of employees like Tracey Larson, Bank of American Fork is making strides in helping to prevent elder financial abuse. Because of the bank’s innovations like account tools to help protect seniors and education about how to protect loved ones, awareness of this widespread problem is growing. To move prevention beyond Bank of American Fork customers, the bank is collaborating with other organizations and financial institutions to make offerings like this nationwide.

If you are a senior who needs, or may soon need, help with your finances or a caregiver of a loved one, you are not alone. Visit blog.bankaf.com/seniors. Ask your banker about what resources are available to you.

Tracey Larson, vice president and special projects manager at Bank of American Fork, accepted the 2014 American Bankers Association Community Commitment Award for Protecting Older Americans, from John Ikard, American Bankers Association chairman, on behalf of Bank of American Fork in Dallas on October 21. Larson is also the financial representative for the Governor’s Commission on Aging and is also a member of Provo’s Elderly and Vulnerable Adult Coalition.

The little boy was so traumatized by neglect and abuse that he spoke to his therapist from inside a cardboard box for two years. Inside, he clung to his trusted teddy bear—the only one he felt comfortable with enough to have inside with him. This child—and thousands of others like him—has benefitted from your donations to Bank of American Fork’s Project Teddy Bear. Each holiday season, we collect new and clean, gently used stuffed animals to give to children at family support centers across Utah. Many of the children are victims of abuse, neglect, poverty or addiction. Some have been taken from their homes into state custody during the night; others have been moved from one foster home to another; yet others have experienced the violent loss of a loved one.

When these children, and perhaps all children, can hug and hold their own teddy bear, it brings comfort and a feeling of safety.

You can help. Project Teddy Bear is an opportunity for you to join with the communities in Davis, Salt Lake and Utah counties, and donate teddy bears and other stuffed animals. Starting this month, all Bank of American Fork branches will be accepting donations of new or clean and gently used stuffed animals through December 16.

Looking for the perfect gift for employees, those hard-to-please relatives and friends?

We have the solution: a VISA® Gift card. Bank of American Fork’s VISA® Gift cards allow recipients to decide how they want to spend their money, saving you the hassle of shopping for all the people on your list. They’re the perfect gift for any occasion, including those coming up—holidays and end-of-the-year employee rewards. To purchase a gift card or to find out more about the fees that apply when you purchase a gift card, please visit our website or your nearest branch.

Amid a string of headlines revealing security breaches among high-profile retailers, banks across the country are working to ensure that their customers’ private information remains private. But with the impersonal approach offered by national banks, some customers are finding that they feel more uncertain than ever about the security of their finances. Big banks sometimes struggle in connecting with their customers as individuals with unique needs. A bank headquartered on the east coast may lack the presence to personally attend to Rocky Mountain residents and their concerns.

As a local institution that has grown alongside the Utah Valley communities over the last century, Bank of American Fork understands the threats local customers face. What’s more, the bank employs new technology to enhance the customer experience, not replace it. Bank of American Fork’s strategy in combating fraud begins with a comprehensive awareness of potential threats, both online and off, while working closely with customers to offer them the tools and knowledge necessary to secure their finances.

Data compromises in recent months involving large retailers such as Target, Apple and Home Depot have only heightened people’s awareness of the real-world dangers threatening the safety of their savings. Bank of American Fork’s layered security has minimized the risk to their customers, and the bank is proactive in identifying those who may be affected while working with them to take preventative measures such as issuing new cards and flagging suspect spending to ensure that their finances are still safe.

“We take the threat of identity theft very seriously because, as a local bank, these are our friends and family we’re working with,” said Blaine Crosby, Bank of American Fork’s chief information officer. “When a community entrusts us with their finances, we want them to rest easy knowing their money is secure.”

Bank of American Fork’s layered security extends to all its financial services. This includes installing a number of safeguards at each point of transaction, including ATMs. For example, at the start of 2014, 95 percent of ATMs across the nation were running on the Windows XP operating system. Microsoft announced that they were discontinuing support for Windows XP, potentially opening a window for exploits by hackers. Bank of American Fork was already in the process of transitioning its ATMs to Windows 7, and quickly had each of its machines up to date. This ensured access to the latest updates and security patches and preempted the risks faced by other machines that were still running on outdated operating systems. The ATMs routinely issue security alerts to report skimmers, hackers, or suspect transactions, and in the event that security reports show evidence of vulnerability, the ATMs can immediately be shut down remotely.

Additionally, Bank of American Fork is combating online fraud by offering Rapport™, a security solution for home computers provided through the financial security experts at Trusteer, Inc. Rapport™ is a downloadable set of tools that works alongside existing firewalls and antivirus programs to help protect against phishing scams and malware. The service, which is provided at no cost to customers through Bank of American Fork, works by monitoring for potential threats as customers handle their billing and transactions during online banking, and can be configured to help protect against threats on other websites that can serve as an entry point for malicious behavior.

The free software is simple to install, entirely transparent and does not interfere with normal computer use. While use of this security software is not compulsory for Bank of American Fork customers, it is highly recommended.

Bank of American Fork is highly dedicated to security. Attention to technological safeguards provides its customers with protection while still allowing for the personal touch of a local establishment with a strong sense of community. Despite the ongoing threats facing a rapidly changing financial environment, Bank of American Fork, with the cooperation of its customers, is committed to providing them a high level of financial security, and with it, peace of mind.

Sandy Dubois started Project Teddy Bear 15 years ago as a way for employees at Bank of American Fork to give back to their communities instead of giving gifts to each other during the holidays. Dubois is passionate about helping children, and she wanted the project to be about the at-risk children in Utah communities. That first year, customers, community members and bank employees donated a couple of hundred teddy bears to be taken to a family care center to be used in play therapy or for children taken from their homes and from everything they knew. Last year, during the 14th Annual Project Teddy Bear, you brought in more than 20,000 bears that served the children in care centers across Utah.

Every year Dubois and others hope the care centers will call and say there’s no need for the bears—that all of Utah’s children are being taken care of and none are victims of abuse or neglect. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, so Bank of American Fork seeks the community’s help in increasing the number of donations every year.

Now, Project Teddy Bear’s national recognition from Independent Community Bankers of America’s 2014 National Community Bank Service Award will help spread the word and get more people involved in helping Utah’s children and children across the nation. Independent Banker magazine highlighted the project in its September issue and Dubois and Bank of American Fork invite any other bank or business to copy the model.

These girl scouts got involved with Project Teddy Bear by proactively collecting hundreds of bears in their community.

“The reason this recognition is important to us is because it helps the community,” said Richard Beard, president and CEO of Bank of American Fork. “Our local communities have helped more than 73,000 children simply by getting involved. Some people drop off one bear when they come in to make a deposit and we have others, like girl-scout troops, who take on the project and bring in hundreds of bears. Each donation matters, because each of those bears represents an at-risk child here in Utah.”

Project Teddy Bear will start its 15th annual collection beginning November 20. Drop off a bear at any of our 14 branch locations. We know you care about the children in your communities, so talk to us at www.facebook.com/BankAF or @bankaf to find out how you can be involved.

If you are a CEO or business owner, you are probably familiar with the phrase, “It’s lonely at the top.” While there is some truth to that notion, I believe it is often lonelier than it needs to be, especially in regard to the financial affairs of the business.

The problem is that most owners and CEOs hold their financial information very close to the vest. They—and their accounting personnel—share it with only a few top company officers, whom they hold accountable for results. While this serves to keep the numbers confidential, it fails on two important accounts.

First, it reinforces the misperception of many employees that business owners are awash in wealth. This reflects the tendency to view them based on the revenue their companies generate rather than their profitability. Even profitability generally doesn’t give the true picture, since it takes real cash to pay the bills—and net profits only reflect cash when accounting is done on a “cash basis.” Accrual accounting often shows a profit even when there is inadequate cash to cover obligations. When this happens, business owners don’t feel affluent; they feel stressed out as they scramble for sources of cash!

The second problem with owners and executives keeping all financial data confidential is that frontline operating folks are kept in the dark regarding the essential information they need to succeed. For these frontliners, this is like driving a car without a dashboard; they are blind as to how fast they are going, how much fuel is being consumed, and whether they are likely to arrive at their destination safely and on time.

It makes sense, then, to share key performance indicators with those who do the work that creates desired outcomes. The question, of course, is what exactly to share with them. The answer requires a bit of analysis, but generally isn’t too tough. In any business, you need to understand both leading and lagging performance indicators. Lagging indicators are things like profitability or cash flow. They are the results of leading indicators like sales, cost control, or how fast you collect receivables.

Real financial literacy, whether at the executive level—or on the frontline is a function of understanding both leading and lagging indicators. Even more important, it is the recognition of all employees of how to positively impact the leading indicators, so that lagging indicators ultimately deliver a message of success. What this amounts to is a general prescription for open book management, a process whereby every employee uses company financial data to help create the financial outcomes desired in their business.

The costs of doing this, while generally not exorbitant, are nonetheless an important consideration. The first and most critical cost is your willingness to share company data and the level of your trust in your team. Are you willing to share the good, bad, and ugly data that defines your business—and do you trust your people to use it for the benefit of the enterprise and not divulge it outside the company? These questions must be answered in the affirmative if you are to move forward with open book management. To answer them honestly often requires considerable discussion among managerial and frontline employees.

The second major cost is that of deciding where to focus—and educating each employee to understand key indicators and their relationship to each other. It is not enough to share the data; every employee must understand why each indicator is important, what drives it, and how they can personally impact it. This requires training time as you initiate open book management—and consistent sustaining efforts by company leaders thereafter.

The third and final major cost is deciding on how and when to publish or present dashboard data. It should be presented in a manner that is easily understood and appreciated by all employees—and must be regularly updated and posted on a timely basis. Presentation needn’t be high-tech, but it must communicate essential information that can be acted upon!

Done right, open book management can be an incredible tool in making it “less lonely at the top.” In many companies, it has been an essential element in bringing about success. Indeed, a recent study by the Denison Consulting Group revealed that companies that use open book management consistently rank in the top 10% of all companies surveyed. Open book management won’t eliminate the ultimate responsibility of leadership, but done right, it can definitely serve to distribute the load!

Richard Tyson is the founder, principal owner and president of CEObuilder, which provides forums for consulting and coaching to executives in small businesses. For 22 years, CEObuilder has successfully brought about an outstanding financial return for CEO and executive clients through providing leading-edge content in the areas of strategizing, team-building, problem-solving and managing for results, as well as the use of proprietary learning and coaching models.

Recently, a customer came into one of our branches to deposit money from a very small, retail business. One of the $50 bills was counterfeit and we quickly realized that the counterfeiter took advantage of the fact that the receiving end of the bill was a young, inexperienced teenager, working his first summer job.

Another way a counterfeiter might scam people is with a stack of mixed bills for a KSL or Craigslist sale. A counterfeiter might buy your item from a re-sale site like KSL, and hand you a stack of $20 bills. Knowing you’ll likely notice if they’re all counterfeit, the counterfeiter will mix in fake bills in the middle, which you might skim by when you’re counting the money.

How can you avoid being scammed by counterfeit bills? Below are a few tips to help you.

Hold each bill up to the light. You should be able to see fibers, or threads, in the bills. Make sure you hold each one up, since some may be real and some may be counterfeit. You might feel silly at first, but it’s better to be safe than sorry!

What does the bill feel like? When you have a stack of bills, feel each one. Do any feel different than the others? Checking what the money feels like is one of the easiest ways to spot a counterfeit bill.

Think like a counterfeiter. Counterfeiters know better than to try and pass off fake bills at a bank. Counterfeiters typically try to launder counterfeit bills through fast-food restaurants, mall shops or other places where inexperienced teenagers won’t detect fake bills. If you’re a business owner, make sure all of your employees are trained on detecting counterfeit bills. Sometimes it helps to make sure they’ve seen and handled bills of different denominations. If you’re selling something on KSL or Craigslist or similar, make sure you’re wary of counterfeit bills.

Ask your banker. If you suspect something might be counterfeit, bring it to your banker’s attention. They likely have machines that help to detect fake bills and can check for you. Don’t try and hide it in a stack of bills.

Guest post by Ken Burnett, VP/ Director of Training and Business Development, Bank of American Fork

This series is written from experience and is part of Bank of American Fork’s training program. The program embraces the philosophy that training is a skill-based job, and managers need to learn specific skills to be successful.

The purpose of this article is to teach you how to use job aids and references during training. Start by considering an important question. Am I going to train to memory or to a job aid or reference? Or am I going to train to both? You’ll end up wasting time in the classroom if you train an employee to do a complex task that doesn’t happen frequently or is difficult without a job aid or reference. However, if the task is frequent enough and not difficult, the repetition of the task will move the performance of the task into long-term memory. If that’s the case, you’ll use classroom time to begin the process of setting the task to memory. Setting the task to memory requires repetition.

Back to tasks that require use of a job aid or reference. As a side note, job aids are instructions for how to perform a task, to be used while performing the task. A reference is listed data needed to perform a part of a task.

For example, a job aid would be a how-to document for entering a plane reservation including the steps to enter the plane reservation, and the reference would be the list of country codes. Both are valuable, but they are not the same thing. Top performers may not need the job aid because they are familiar with the task, but they likely still need the reference.

After a job aid is developed, it is easy to simply attach it to a memo because the stimulus is clear (the employee knows when and where to perform the task), and the employee can complete the steps without practice or direction. Job aids without instruction can work fine if learners are already comfortable with the task, the task is not complex or the task happens frequently or isn’t critical. However it doesn’t work if the circumstances noted above change.

Unfortunately employees are not usually trained on how to use job aids in situations where a task is new or complex. Without training centered on the job aid, employees often ignore the job aid, despite managers’ expectations that employees will be able to complete the task more easily if they follow the job aid. Job aids are tossed because they often appear to be too complex, perhaps even more complex than the job, itself. Let’s continue to talk about how to make this process work more effectively.

The following is a simple design process to help the training and the job aid complement each other. As you design the training, start with “What’s in it for the learner?” Next provide an overview of the process and expected performance. Then, you’re ready to get started training on the task itself. Most job aids should start with some sort of context. For example, answer, “Why am I doing this?” and “What does this accomplish?”

The job aid should conclude by describing a successful result. The advantage of doing the first of a series of job aids in a classroom is for learners to be able to ask questions. The ensuing dialogue helps the learning by allowing students to learn from each other

The best training approach will be to use the job aid with a simulation of the live environment. There are memory chips in the finger tips. If the learner tries a task using the job aid that is close to how they will perform the task on the job, they will be comfortable performing the task on the job.

The sections of the job aid may be a step-action table or cookbook-type job aids depending on the need. The how-to sections should be step-by-step tables using action words as instruction (e.g., enter, list, complete, etc.). Each step should be a separate task. The step should start with an action, include a statement of where the performer is in the task and conclude with a statement about what’s next.

By practicing the task in a simulated environment, the associates gain confidence that they can perform the task using the job aid. You can then release similar job aids without training.

Job aids are critical to the performance of many tasks. Effectiveness is increased when you train with the job aid in the hands of the learner.

Ken Burnett is vice president/director of training and business development for Bank of American Fork. He is responsible for training more than 300 employees on a variety of topics, including coaching and feedback for dozens of senior managers within the organization.

This blog includes articles, information, tips and advice on all things money by the financial experts at Bank of American Fork. But this blog is not one-sided; we want to hear what you think. Share your ideas, experiences and comments to get the dialogue going.